Living, and dying, with suicide bombers
By Ralph Peters
After spending trillions of dollars on high-tech armaments, the United States finds itself confounded by a dirt-cheap weapon of genius: The suicide bomber. The ultimate precision weapon and genuine "smart bomb," the suicide bomber is hard to deter and exasperatingly difficult to defeat.
This is the "poor man's nuke." For a few hundred dollars (or less) and a human life, a suicide bomber can achieve strategic effects the U.S. Air Force can only envy.

For all of the claims that technology would dominate the 21st century  and not only in the realm of warfare  we find that impassioned faith still trumps microchips. Armed with a fervent belief in his god's appetite for blood, the suicide bomber can dominate headlines around the world with a few pounds of explosives.

A paradox of the Information Age is that it's simultaneously the new age of superstition. As calcified social orders collapse under the pressures of global change, those who feel most threatened flee into debased, occult religion. Increasingly, fanaticism finds outlet in shedding the blood not only of unbelievers, but also of co-religionists whose beliefs are seen as imperfect.

The suicide bomber views himself (more rarely, herself) as fulfilling a divine mission whose execution will be rewarded in paradise. How do we discourage an enemy who regards death as a promotion? How do we identify the religious madman among the masses in time to stop him from killing? On a practical level, defeating the increasing numbers of suicide bombers is our most difficult security mission.

Homeland vulnerable

SHATTERING WARFARE'S RULES
The U.S. military faced suicide bombers in the past: In the closing months of World War II, Japanese kamikaze pilots flew bomb-laden planes into U.S. Navy ships. The kamikazes generated casualties but could not change the outcome of the war. Strapped into their aircraft, those who volunteered to die for the "divine emperor" were the closest thing we ever faced to today's Islamist fanatics.
But there were key differences: The kamikaze pilots were disciplined military men attacking military targets. Their goal wasn't to slaughter civilians but to stave off defeat. They were fighting for an imperial idea, not for a global religious crusade.

We fought Muslim fanatics before, too. In the wake of the Spanish-American War, the Moro insurrection in the southern Philippines pitted impassioned jihadis against the U.S. Army. It took years, but the Moros were defeated by superior organization, a battlefield ruthlessness impossible in today's media environment - and Gatling guns. The combat was so brutal, we developed the famous M-1911 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol to stop attackers who were frenzied by religious visions and drugs.

Yet, even the Moros weren't intent on suicide. Willing to die to drive out the unbelievers, they didn't seek death.

We fought other faith-inspired enemies, from the Boxers in China to the Ghost Dancers on our Indian frontier - opponents whose trust in mystical spells or totems to ward off bullets failed to armor their flesh against modern rifles. Still, every such enemy fought to win, however hopeless the odds. None intended to die for the sake of dying.

Driven by a nihilistic desire to achieve salvation through slaughter, today's suicide bombers are a genuinely new phenomenon. With their twin goals of self-annihilation and creating mass carnage, they've fundamentally shifted the battlefield's rules - and its location. We've heard a great deal about our high-tech "revolution in military affairs."

Welcome to the counter-revolution.

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Except for 9/11, suicide bombers have conducted their missions abroad. That's going to change, but it's a credit to the patriotism and decency of American Muslims that none of our fellow citizens has strapped on a bomb and walked into a Wal-Mart. Nonetheless, our enemies will find a way to bring their deadly campaign back to our doorsteps.

The suicide bomber is so powerful a weapon that not even the terrorists have realized its full potential. Today, we see intermittent, localized attacks. The suicide bomber is at the same stage of development as the tank was in World War I: Used in small numbers, armored vehicles did not achieve and sustain critical mass.

We need to prepare for the suicide-bomber blitzkrieg, when murderous zealots come at us in waves.

The obvious forerunners of today's Islamist fanatics were the Assassins, the notorious cult that operated from Persia through Syria in the 11th and 12th centuries. Armed only with sacramental knives and patience, the Assassins terrorized governments by killing sultans and grand viziers. It took the invading Mongols  the all-time masters of counter-insurgency warfare  to destroy the Assassins in their mountain strongholds.

But assassination became commonplace in the Muslim world thereafter. The Assassins came from an off-shoot sect of Shiite Islam. Today's suicide bombers are overwhelmingly Sunnis, but the pattern of waging an asymmetrical conflict through carefully planned murders is a tradition, not an aberration.

To be fair to the Assassins, they attacked only the mighty, not the masses. And, as Bernard Lewis, the giant of Middle Eastern studies at Princeton, pointed out, Islam's prohibition against suicide meant that yesteryear's murderers allowed themselves to be caught and suffer torture rather than kill themselves.

But the new age of faith is also an era of the perversion of religion, from the primitive blood-cult evident in ritual beheadings to the rationalization of a suicide bomber's death  not as self-murder but the consequence of a brave attack in the conduct of holy war.

Nor should it be as difficult as we assume for Westerners to grasp the psychology at work in the suicide bomber. Our own history is full of martyrs and religious warriors who went boldly and knowingly to their deaths. In every culture, the really good haters die well.

Who are they?

Deplore his act though we rightly do, the suicide bomber who imagines himself a defender of his threatened faith and humiliated people is the extremist equivalent of the soldier we revere for throwing himself on a grenade to save his comrades' lives. Our rules for self-sacrifice are different, but the psychology is uncomfortably familiar. The results may differ terribly, but the motivation has filial roots.

We see only the indiscriminate carnage, the apparent madness. Until we recognize his crazed valor, we cannot understand the suicide bomber. And it's much harder to defeat an enemy you don't understand.

Suicide bombers are recruited from the ranks of troubled souls, from those who find mundane reality overwhelming and terrifying. The suicide bomber longs for release from the insecurities of his daily experience. He is fleeing from life every bit as much as he's rushing toward paradise. He dreads women, sin and doubt.

Hypnotized by faith and excited to ecstasy, he can walk into a children's clinic and press a detonator. No heart-rending child's face will stop him. His god will forgive the innocent. Nothing matters but the divine will as interpreted by the masters of terror  the most brilliant psychologists of our time.

We have faced enemies more dangerous, but none so implacable.

The world's great strategic struggle of this century is between those who believe in a generous, loving god  in any religion  and those who serve a punitive, merciless deity.

The suicide bomber has chosen his side.

Ralph Peters is the author, most recently, of New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy, and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

I certainly agree that it's important that we attempt to understand the minds of suicide bombers, and those who manipulate them.

I guess we have two broad options in dealing with suicide bombers: the Israeli approach, to build walls, rely on military superiority, and use harsh tactics--or the approach the British finally used successfully to end IRA terrorism or the South Africans used to end ANC terrorism--to understand and co-opt the goals of the terrorists.

The Israeli's have little choice in their approach, as they are surrounded and outnumbered.

We probably do have a choice, but so far, few of our leaders have been interested in addressing Al Qaeda's main goal--to end U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia. When anyone tries to talk about terrorists' goals or feelings, they're quickly pounced on as "soft on terrorism."

I was most interested in the book published last year, which examined all known cases of suicide terrorism. Over 70% were due, not to religious fundamentalism, but to territorial occupation. This suggests that if we were very careful about our Mideast footprint, we might reduce or risk of terrorism.

The soft way might eventually be the winning way, but who knows? These things are so complicated.

I certainly agree that it's important that we attempt to understand the minds of suicide bombers, and those who manipulate them.

I guess we have two broad options in dealing with suicide bombers: the Israeli approach, to build walls, rely on military superiority, and use harsh tactics--or the approach the British finally used successfully to end IRA terrorism or the South Africans used to end ANC terrorism--to understand and co-opt the goals of the terrorists.

The Israeli's have little choice in their approach, as they are surrounded and outnumbered.

We probably do have a choice, but so far, few of our leaders have been interested in addressing Al Qaeda's main goal--to end U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia. When anyone tries to talk about terrorists' goals or feelings, they're quickly pounced on as "soft on terrorism."

I was most interested in the book published last year, which examined all known cases of suicide terrorism. Over 70% were due, not to religious fundamentalism, but to territorial occupation. This suggests that if we were very careful about our Mideast footprint, we might reduce or risk of terrorism.

The soft way might eventually be the winning way, but who knows? These things are so complicated.

Mariner.

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I think the soft way worked with IRA terrorists because the english and irish are similar enough in culture. You can be a catholic in England, you can be a protestant in Ireland. The totalitarian, intolerant and violent nature of the current incarnation of islam makes the soft approach untenable, I fear. Don't let complications numb your intellect, brother.

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